When Ruby Dee decided to join the drama club at the virtually all-white Hunter College in New York, where she was a student, the sponsoring teacher told her, “But, Ruby, there aren’t any maid’s parts.”
Despite this shaky beginning-or maybe because of it-Dee went on to earn accolades as an actress in movies, theater, television and radio and as a writer and to wield considerable influence in the theater of political activism.
Dee’s first stage appearance was with the American Negro Theater in Harlem in 1941. She had her Broadway debut in “Jeb” in 1946. Her many performances include “A Raisin in the Sun,” both the stage and movie versions, and two Spike Lee films, “Do the Right Thing” and “Jungle Fever.” Her writing includes short stories, humor, poetry and adaptations of African folk tales for children.
It may be, though, that Dee has made her most enduring mark and invested her greatest passion in the arena of social activism. In Chicago recently for an Evanston/North Shore YWCA benefit dinner for victims of domestic violence, Dee explained how acting and activism have dovetailed in her life.
“I’ve been at this expression business since I can remember. Lucky, I suppose, because I didn’t have to wonder what I was going to be when I grew up. I began writing poetry by the time I was 9. And my mother would send my poems to the newspaper, and some were published. So it was affirmed in me early that I would be an actress or a writer.
“My mother was a teacher, and I guess she sensed it early on. She had wanted to be an actress, or an elocutionist as they called it in those days. As a teacher she was interested in English and expression and storytelling, and she introduced us to some of the poets.”
Dee remembers her first poem, which her mother sent to the New York Amsterdam News. She recites her first published poem from memory:
“The graveyard is so quiet and lonely/ A place for dead people only/ Too late to live, when all they had to give/ Is laid beneath the sod.”
“Philosophically, I don’t agree with that today,” she said.
While she was in college, Dee said, she had all sorts of encouraging things happen, none of which ever made her forget the remark from the drama club teacher.
“If you’re an African-American, at some point in your life you reckon with the fact that there’s something about you that’s different. It’s like coming of age. I came to realize, much later in life, that these little drops in your consciousness affect you and keep you from moving forward.
“I used to think I was going to go to Hollywood and be a starlet and do grade B movies, and then I realized that that scene was closed-at that time-except for certain pictures. For instance, Billie Holiday was a maid in a picture, and she was dusting the piano and that gave her an excuse to sing. You know, they were menial roles, not the way African-Americans really are, but a lesser role that was no threat to anybody.”
Political activism came naturally to Dee.
“I guess that’s a way of holding on to your sanity because if you sit back and wait for things to change, for the ugliness to be made beautiful, that’s too frustrating. You must get out into the world and fight the battles, and then you find other people of all colors who also are engaged in struggles of one kind or another. You learn the nature and the necessity of struggle.
“I really believe in creative agitation. This country was founded by creative agitators. I don’t think a democracy can be healthy without it, if indeed we are a democracy. We have work to do, as a people, as a nation, as a species.”
Dee said she’ll never consider herself as having “made it.” Rather, she said, she’s still struggling.
“I’ve done so few roles compared to what I might have done. As an African-American I’ve done pretty good, given the whole spectrum of racism. But I’m still working in terms of encouraging people to read more, to love literature, to love writers, to understand how necessary it is to read and to know one’s country, one’s history, one’s family, one’s self. And to know the joy of reading, the joy of the spoken word. That’s still something I’m working on every day of my life.”
Dee balanced a career with raising three children and said she doesn’t know whether being married to actor Ossie Davis since 1948 made that easier or not.
“I can’t imagine being married to anyone else, although we do have everything that’s common to all relationships because we’re human beings and men and women, and the society impacts the marriage and the family so much.”
The responsibilities of the older generation weigh heavily on Dee, who admitted to being in her late 60s.
“I think it’s nobody’s business how old you are, though as people we want to know; we find some comfort in knowing other people’s ages. I’m working toward being able to celebrate age because I think we’re living longer for a reason. And I think that we seniors have a job to perform in the world that only we, now, seem to be capable of doing.
“Because our children have no memory. They don’t remember struggle, for example, or how to struggle. Our children are governed by the images they feed on. And we’re guilty of something as elders: We didn’t take control of those images. They say we are what we eat; we are, also, what we think and what we see.
“When I think of my grandchildren, for example, the images that they’re fed with have nothing to do with humanism, have nothing to do with those things that are lovely and stunning. I think they’re merchants’ pawns. They’re trained to be consumers; their value system is lacking something because we permitted all the old agonies to be cast aside without considering the cost.”
Dee recalls the ice box she had when her children were small, and the man who delivered the ice in his horse-drawn wagon. She can’t get over the changes of less than 50 years.
“The human being has been bombarded by it, and it’s beating us, as a species, into the ground. I think the elders may be the only ones to say there are other ways to live and be on Earth. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Dee would like television to be more daring, more innovative, more thought-provoking. “The sum total of us cannot be the dollar sign, cannot be the bottom line. It cannot be. Those who go down without a fight are guilty.”
As activists, Dee and Davis go back a long way, even before their protests of the Rosenberg executions in 1953.
“We go back to the streets of Harlem when the stores of Harlem would not hire blacks to work in the stores. And blacks could not go into business in black neighborhoods; the banks wouldn’t lend you money. We had to go to a black bank to get money to buy a house when we bought one in Mt. Vernon (New York).”
She bemoaned the accolade of “first black” to do this or that. “One should whisper that. One shouldn’t be proud that the sum total of the body of the American mentality would permit such unfairness for so long.”
She’s happy to be working for the YWCA and for women’s rights because, she said, “I’m hoping that we as women will understand that we raise these men. Women should study and understand the history and struggle of women in the world because how can you teach your sons respect of women, of people, unless you understand the dynamics and the consequences of a lack of respect? We must instruct our sons in respect for women.”
Dee has been helping to raise money for shelters for women because she believes there has to be some place for women to turn, whether they have money or not. She encourages women to continue to protest.
“What will happen if women are forced backward? How dare we talk about the sanctity of the family and not talk about the lack of support. It’s like talking out of two sides of your mouth. The political system, the economic system, is failing the family. The system needs revamping. We have to be willing to take hard looks and not buy the propaganda. We have to fight the righteous fight-informed creative agitation.”
Dee intends to continue to work in all the areas she always has.
“The word `retire’ bothers me because I believe that 65 is a time for a new beginning. There’s a mandate for those of us over 65, and we have to discover what that mandate is. And it’s not nursing our ills.
“We have a job to do. We’ve got to petition our government; we’ve got to make our youngsters aware; we’ve got things to share; we’ve got things to do as elders, as seniors.
“There’s much that we have to do for our children before we leave. I’m thinking that’s why we’re living longer and stronger. We have some messages to impart, some instruction and some concrete help to give. We have the least of any segment of the population to lose. We need to say, `We left our doors open and the monsters came in. Now how do we kick them out?’ “
Dee works with young actresses in a mentoring role. She enjoys working with young women because, she said, “I have something to give them, and, in turn, they have something to give me. We have an exchange. It’s a shame to die and leave treasures in the ground or hidden. One must die penniless; one must die having given it away or done something with it.”
And this is the reason, she said, that she no longer believes in the ideas of that poem she wrote when she was 9 years old.
